


in blood, like tears, they drown

by TataniSky



Series: Ideas Graveyard [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark fic, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Harry in Westeros, Incomplete, Master of Death Harry Potter, Multi, Reincarnation, Retelling, Underage - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24028027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TataniSky/pseuds/TataniSky
Summary: Death faces him with its borrowed skin, a rictus smile twisting the visage of his once friend. "You are the only one that Death will never touch," it croons at him, eyes both dark and bright with the rise and fall of stars and galaxies.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Jon Snow
Series: Ideas Graveyard [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556299
Comments: 8
Kudos: 122





	in blood, like tears, they drown

Harry opened her eyes; the sky stretched out above her, cloudless and gray. Her field of view was partly obscured by red, and when she focused her eyes the color took the shape of leaves. Deep red - like blood - against a white branch; when she turned her head to follow the tree limb, she was met with a face. The tree watched her with solemn eyes that bled dark sap, its mouth a crooked gash in the trunk. 

The tree whispered to her, its voice both one and many, a buzzing cacophony that tickled the back of her brain. She couldn’t understand it, but an ominous shiver crawled down her spine and rose goosebumps across her skin. Something cold touched her cheek and the bubble broke; all at once, she sucked in a harsh breath, lungs expanding as if for the first time and she sat up, coughing harshly against the dry scratch of winter air.

She was sitting in a deep layer of snow, cradled against the roots of the weeping tree. Her surroundings were unfamiliar to her, but that in itself wasn’t surprising to her. How many times had she been thrust into similar situations? She had lost count long ago.

“Again?” she asked the silence, her voice weary. An icy breeze broke the stillness of the forest around her, flirting past her rosy cheeks; faintly, she could hear a noise like rattling, like the crumble of dry leaves. It sounded like laughter. She was being mocked, but she only closed her eyes against it and sighed. 

Bracing herself against the tree, she stood and brushed the collected snow from her clothing. She was wearing a simple, but warm, woven dress with sturdy, if worn, boots and a shawl around her shoulders. Looking around herself, she could vaguely see the outline of a stone structure in the distance, so she began walking towards it. Eventually, she came upon what appeared to be the outer wall of a castle town. 

She spotted the guards as she approached the gates, but wasn’t worried about being stopped. She watched, with tired humor, as they set eyes on her and their expressions momentarily glazed over before clearing once more. They nodded to her with new recognition and she nodded back, lips pulled into a wry smile. 

She wasn’t sure what her appointed “role” was in this place, but considering she was dressed modestly, it must have been a servant of the castle. She wandered the town for a while, trying to familiarize herself with its layout while simultaneously waiting for something to happen. She didn’t have to wait too long, as soon a voice was calling out to her.

“There you are, Harry!” a young woman ambled towards her. She had a comely face, also wearing simple garb with an apron over the front. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but was already heavily pregnant; a wicker basket dangling from one arm.

“Miss Elizabeth,” answered Harry, the name coming naturally to her, warmly even, as if she’d known this woman for a long time. 

“Where have you been, lass? I turned my back for one second and you were gone; did you get lost in the clouds again?” the older woman asked with a fond, if exasperated, smile. 

“I may have gotten lost in thought again,” Harry played along easily, putting on a sheepish smile. Dutifully, she took the loaded basket from the pregnant woman and followed along behind her while Elizabeth continued to ramble on; Harry listened to her share the latest gossip with half an ear. She noticed that Elizabeth was leading them into the servant’s entrance, once that opened up into a large kitchen. The sudden heat felt blistering against her cold cheeks and she blinked against it. She followed Elizabeth in removing extra layers, nodding to the other kitchen maids whose eyes briefly glazed over before they greeted her in kind. 

So she was a kitchen maid this time. Harry was not amused by the joke. 

“Stop daydreaming, girl,” one of the older - properly this time, with wrinkles and everything - kitchen maids shouted at her and Harry had no choice but to comply. She was sat on a stool next to a massive sack of potatoes and told to peel. It was only lifetimes of learned patience that made the mind-numbing task almost pleasant; hours of peeling spud after spud until her back, neck, and eyes hurt, her fingers cramping. 

Then she was being pulled up, a large jug of wine shoved into her arms, and all she could do was blindly follow the rest of the maids through a side entrance into the feasting hall. 

She paused to take it all in, a feeling of premonition settling heavily in her stomach. Ah, she thought, so these were the main characters of this story.

The Starks sat at the front table, with the patriarch in the middle and his red-haired wife sitting next to him. Their five children sitting on either side of them. Harry thought they were a handsome family, though perhaps a bit grim. Eddard Stark embodied his name far too well - a stern-looking man surrounded by gray stone in a gray hall in a gray castle that was covered by white snow. 

And then there was the odd one out. 

“M’lord,” Harry announced herself, presenting the jug of wine before filling the goblet on the table. Jon Snow, drawn from his conversation with the young Greyjoy, offered her a wry smile, “I’m no lord, m’lady.” 

She took him in at a glance. A youth - only fourteen years of age - with dark, curly hair and pensive brown eyes. His face was still round with baby fat and he hadn’t quite grown into his features, but she knew he would be a handsome man. He had an air of destiny about him, his golden threads of fate glimmering brightly as they stretched into eternity. 

The corners of her mouth turned up into a secret smile and she demurred, peering at him through her eyelashes. “... and I am no lady, m’lord.” 

Then she was stepping away, feeling the weight of his confused stare on her back. 

\--

Later, in the relative privacy of her own room, Harry had a moment to breathe. She looked at her murky reflection in a poorly polished bronze mirror, taking in her face. Her features rarely ever deviated, though the few times she’d been born into a different body, her killing curse eyes always followed her.

They stared at her now, a vivid green even in the subpar mirror. A small face bracketed by a riot of dark curls, still round with youth. She was also only about fourteen years old, though was considered a mature woman since her bleeding had already begun. The first time she’d been reborn as a woman, she’d been absolutely mortified with her body’s monthly ritual. Her memories of being Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived were crisp and stark in her mind. As if one day Harry Potter had gone to sleep in 12 Grimmauld Place and had woken up a woman and in a completely different world. 

It wasn’t quite so simple, of course. Harry Potter had lived until the ripe old age of eighty-five, passing painlessly in his sleep surrounded by children and grandchildren. Expecting to finally reunite with his lost loved ones in death, he was disappointed and apprehensive when he opened his eyes and found himself in that strange, in-between realm once more.

Except it was not the familiar visage of Dumbledore that met him there. 

Death did not possess form; Death was an omniscient and omnipresent truth, a rule of the universe. It was not necessarily an entity, but more of an energy. One that borrowed other people’s faces. 

“Harry,” Death had spoken, curiously wearing the face of the young Colin Creevey, not as Harry had last seen him as a young man, but as he’d been so many years ago - a boy of only twelve. 

The child sat on a bench, swinging his legs back and forth, the toes of his shoes barely skimming the tiles of the station platform. Harry had felt dread settle heavy in his stomach.

“Colin?” he’d asked, though he’d known better. Colin’s face smiled at him, though it didn’t seem to sit correctly on his face. His eyes were also too dark, too focused - like the eyes of a predator locked onto prey. 

“Try again, Harry,” Colin’s voice crooned, and behind his voice was an echo of thousands of others. 

Harry had licked his lips, unwilling to give a name to the thing in front of him. 

“Why him?” he avoided, “... why Colin?” It didn’t make much sense to Harry; why choose a face that he wasn’t personally close to.

The boy cocked his head to the side, his rictus smile still in place. “Of course because I’m your biggest fan,  _ Master _ .”

Harry felt his heart skip a beat. Suddenly there was a weight draped across his shoulders, a ring adorning his finger, and an old, gnarled wand slipping seamlessly into his grasp. Distracted, he barely noticed the flash and click of a camera going off, his eyes flying up.

He swallowed a startled noise, though he did jerk backward when suddenly he came face-to-face with the face of his precious godfather. The slightly sinister smile sat better on Sirius’ face, gray eyes watching him with a fevered intensity. 

“Is this what you would prefer, Master?” Sirius’ voice mocked him, standing so close they were nose-to-nose. 

“Stop it!” Harry shouted, angry that the face of a loved one was being used in such a way. He swept his arm at the figure, expecting solid flesh, but his hand merely went through Sirius as if he were a cloud of black smoke. Harry had to bring both arms up to protect his face as the smoke rushed at him with a crazed laugh that sounded horrifyingly like Bellatrix Lestrange. 

“Who am I?” the being asked imperiously, voice coming from behind him.

A cold sweat developed at the back of Harry’s neck and he dare not turn around. He felt the being loom behind him, a tall, dark shadow that no longer wore a human’s face; the pressure it exerted making Harry tremble.

He licked his lips, his throat suddenly dry. “Death,” he finally croaked. 

“Yess,” Death hissed sibilantly, flickers of Voldemort shining through. The fine hairs on his arms rose; he felt like there was a hand reaching for him, long-fingered and clawed. A chill breath moved across his nape and his fingers gripped the Elder Wand with white knuckles. He whirled around, a spell on his lips, but there was nothing behind him.

“What do you want?!” he shouted into the empty, white space of King’s Cross station. 

“Oh, Harry…” Death crooned, and Harry turned on his heel once more, feeling hunted. He froze at his mother’s gentle face staring back at him, feeling anger bubble hot behind his sternum.

“Not her!” he snarled, but Death only narrowed green eyes at him and smiled with Lily Potter’s mouth. She sat calmly on the same bench Colin had, brown-red hair floating behind her as if in water, green eyes glowing eerily. 

“Love is the most powerful force in the universe,” Lily Potter whispered serenely, “a mother’s love turned Death away from you the first time. Then a monster did, the second.”

“Not her,” Harry repeated once more through gritted teeth, once again brandishing the Elder Wand at Death. A toothy smile cracked open Lily’s face, her eyes widening. “As you command,” she purred, standing gracefully from the bench and bending at the waist to bow at Harry mockingly. 

Death shed her skin and suddenly Harry was looking into his own eyes. “The boy who thwarted Death twice and who has now become Master of it.”

“Death,” Harry said, voice tight and eyes angry, “... I have died. I am dead. Let me move on.” 

“Oh, you foolish creature,” Death tutted, reaching for Harry’s face. He flinched but found he couldn’t move, riveted to the spot, watching his own face as it adopted fake pity. Death’s hands were cold but gentle as they caressed his cheekbones. 

“You are the only one Death will never touch,” it whispered to him, green eyes drawing him in like an abyss, his heart pounding in his chest, “not until time itself crumbles and stops. You and I… well, we will have eternity together, dear Master.” 

“What? No!” Harry paled, realizing the curse that he’d unwittingly brought upon himself, “I don’t want to be your Master! The Hollows,” he tried to drop the wand and rip the ring off his finger but found that he couldn’t. 

“Death! I don’t want this; take them back! I… it’s an order!” 

Death blinked and the universe swirled in his eyes, his smile cruel and full of teeth. “It’s time for you to wake up now.” 

A train pulled into the station, doors sliding open as it came to stop. Harry felt himself being pulled into it against his will. He struggled to free himself, but his feet betrayed him - walking forward without his control.

“Death!” Harry snarled, but the entity merely watched, bowing once more at the waist, palm to his chest.

“Forever at your service, Master Harry.” 

From that moment on, she couldn’t even recall how long it had been, she’d been forcefully reincarnated. Life-after-life, she’d been thrust into the middle of a larger picture, tasked with keeping the balance of each world she ended up in. 

Her title may have been Master of Death, but she truly had no sway over the entity. Surely she was immortal and impervious to mortal damage, she was also ridiculously powerful. But she was only a puppet, being strung along and toyed with. Fate’s plaything until the end of time. 

Harry sighed, setting aside the mirror and getting herself ready for bed. She’d learned long ago that she had very little choice in the matter - she was sent here to accomplish something and she wouldn’t get to leave until her mission was done. Not that she ever knew what her mission was; it was different in each life. 

For now, all she knew was that fate was heavy around the Stark family. Jon Snow, in particular. She would have to do her best to stick close to him and perhaps she’d then find out what she was supposed to change in this world. 

Crawling onto her shabby, straw mattress, Harry blew out the nearby candle and tried to sleep. 


End file.
